Rant: Gmail Contacts

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to have a good ol’ rant in on tech!

I use Gmail in the browser, like my friend James. It’s meant to be used there. I’ll use it there. But I often get emailed new contact information, and I want to add it to Google Contacts. Here’s the workflow.

I open the email and click on the ‘add contact’ button.

There’s often no response at this point. The page sits there and I don’t see anything telling me to go to another page. Eventually the browser takes me to a new page in the same screen where I now have a new contact group with the name “Imported DATE” and one user (or possibly two if I clicked, saw no response, and clicked again):

At this point, I have to click the find and merge to get them back down to one. Then I click what groups I want the new user to be in. Of note, you must press the “Apply” button:

No ajax here.

But what about that group?

Now some of this I can do from the list user screen, but I still have to go to contacts, mess with it, and then delete the temp group. No ajax. No way to add just from within mail. No way to open in a new window.

It’s just crap.

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

I’m Mika (aka Ipstenu) and I’m complicated. I’ve been on the net since the days of dedicated terminals and Novation CAT modems and solved Missionaries and Cannibals (or Goats and Cabbages) before I was six, and blog about WordPress and technical/computer things at Half Elf on Tech.

See Full Bio